


slack jaw

by Jo_B



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Nogitsune, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_B/pseuds/Jo_B
Summary: "Like a match into water, part of him fizzled out when the Nogitsune was gone for good." // It gets worse before it gets better.
Relationships: Allison Argent & Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	slack jaw

**Author's Note:**

> [TW for a suicide attempt. Not to get too real on a fanfic website, but it is very personally important to me that the topic gets treated respectfully. Any indication that I have not done so, and I will take this down, no questions asked.]
> 
> Anyway, I finally re-watched Teen Wolf and finally watched the last season. I got really busy in college when season 6 came out, and it took me a couple years and a global pandemic to finally re-watch the show. It still slaps, though I must say, even more than I missed Teen Wolf, I miss Teen Wolf Tumblr. I have so many thoughts about the show and nowhere to put them haha
> 
> I played a little bit with tenses here, which is my biggest weakness, and rewrote a bunch of sections, so please let me know if this sucks. My only other note is that I've been writing for approximately a million years, but this is the first thing I've ever written that made myself cry. Take bets over which line did it in the comments. 
> 
> Thanks for reading xox

_“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything._

_I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig-tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers [...] and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull._

_Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them._

_But they were part of me. They were my landscape.”_

_– The Bell Jar (1963), Sylvia Plath_

* * *

Like a match into water, part of him fizzled out when the Nogitsune was gone for good. Burning was the sensation of being so close to death, with Allison’s loss hanging over him like a heavy, accusatory smoke, and that one night in the high school hallway moved far too quickly for him to take stock of anything at all.

One moment, he stood with the tip of Kira’s sword pressed firmly against his stomach, wondering just how much force he would have to use to send it all the way through.

The next, the box in Isaac’s hands was being thrown shut, locking the Nogitsune away, calming the storm.

The next, he was drowning.

* * *

He can’t quite stop picking at the tip of the match.

Melissa thinks it’s post-traumatic stress. His dad is not inclined to disagree, but he rarely ever speaks it out loud. That was always the funny little tick of their relationship: honesty – the raw, fully _spoken_ and vulnerable kind – is reserved more or less for when the world is ending, though in Beacon Hills, those moments are common enough.

It means that in the middle of the night, when he screams himself awake, his dad is ready at the draw, arms wrapped quickly around him, whispering gently, “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. You’re safe, it’s over – you’re okay.”

Some nights, it sounds more like wishful thinking than anything else.

It also means that by morning, afternoon, early evening, when he has yet to leave his bed, the careful _knock, knock, knock_ of his dad’s knuckle on the doorframe is hesitant and unintrusive. He asks, “How about some dinner?” as if the night is as normal as any other, as if Allison and Aiden and thirty-odd other people aren’t dead and gone forever, as if Stiles could ever be the person he used to be ever again.

Part of him is grateful for the attempt.

He thinks another part of him died when the Nogitsune spit him out onto the McCalls’ living room floor.

* * *

Scott drove them all back in the Jeep, and Lydia was kind enough to let him rest his head on her lap as he lay across the back seat and tried to keep from screaming.

The drive was dazed and silent, the _clanging_ of swords ringing distantly in their ears.

School would be open and oblivious on Monday, as if nothing had ever happened. As if nothing had ever happened? _The greatest trick the devil ever pulled._ Beacon Hills would forget the chaos for a moment, would forget the Nogitsune – would forget _Allison_ – as if the memory could be washed away, painted over, brushed aside.

Beacon Hills would forget, but he would always remember.

The sheriff had been waiting at the McCalls’ by the time they pulled into the driveway, and Stiles didn’t have it in him to restrain himself: he hugged his father tighter than he had in years. He stayed locked where he was, as if he could will himself to disappear just by concealing his face into the sheriff’s ever-present shoulder.

* * *

_“Stilinski!”_

Coach’s voice is sharp against the murmur of students heading out the door.

Stiles’ eyes go first to Scott, a wordless question, but Scott only shrugs in response.

“Get over here,” Coach continues, and resigned – he lets Scott go and heads back to where Finstock is standing, leaning against the desk.

“Yeah, Coach?” he starts. Coach’s eyes are critical, scanning every inch of his face, and if he were not so used to the scrutiny by now, it might have made him squirm.

“You haven’t been in class for the last two weeks.” It’s not a question, nor a demand for some explanation. It is a simple fact, spoken aloud, left as-is.

“Yeah, you know, I’ve been sick,” Stiles explains in spite of the demeanor in front of him. Coach isn’t angry, isn’t smug, isn’t inherently suspicious.

“Your medical leave ended last week.” His last MRI came back clean last week. His passed all his cognitive and visual tests last week. He and his father made a verbal decision that right about now was as good a time as any to come back to school – last week.

He’s not quite sure what he expected.

“Right,” he says. “Right, I mean… not sick like I _was._ Just, uh… under the weather. Here and there.”

He means to say that his alarm clock rang out like Lydia screaming for Allison when he first tried to use it again, so he ripped the cord out of the wall and threw it across the room. He means to say that the last time he set foot at the school, he was moments away from sending a sword through his gut, listening to the Nogitsune swear that everyone he ever loved was going to die, one by one. It is difficult to concentrate on economics, calculus, history after that.

Concern is an expression he has never seen so plain on Coach’s face, and he’s not quite sure whether to feel grateful or pitied.

“Right,” Finstock echoes. “Sounds like nothing a good lacrosse practice couldn’t fix, right?”

“Coach, the lacrosse season’s over.”

“Did I call it a team practice?”

Stiles stares. “I don’t think –”

“This school has a strict policy on truancy, Stilinski,” Coach says, a pointed lie. “Lunchtime detention on the field. Your back-shots are crap.”

* * *

Allison’s funeral was small and quiet.

He stayed glued to Scott practically the entire time, in part because the steady thrum of _it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault_ in the back of his mind was not enough to keep him from crumbling on its own – but also because of the way Scott stared at the closed casket, haunted.

“I didn’t say it back,” Scott had admitted just days before, sitting cross-legged on the edge of Stiles’ bed, Allison’s last confession hanging heavily between them.

He idly considered that if he could have closed the door to his mind just a little sooner, if they had never brought power back to the Nemeton, if he had never dragged Scott out in the middle of the night to search for a body, it would never have mattered.

Scott and Allison might have been a perfectly ordinary, normal couple. Or whatever passed for that in Beacon Hills.

“Scott, you didn’t have to,” he finally said. “You didn’t have to say it. She already knew.”

* * *

Scott can smell the desperation on him most days. He knows it, and it kills him.

He wonders what it is: sharp, bitter anxiety? The musty smell of depression on his skin, the prickling guilt on his clothes? Maybe sleep deprivation is sour and intrusive, shame pungent and smokey.

It’s a slow, hazy day, and all his senses are duller than he’d like them to be, but it is difficult to bring himself to care. Scott appears beside him with practically no warning – and he visibly jumps in spite of himself.

“Oh, sorry,” Scott says, putting his books down on the table, sliding onto the bench across from him.

Stiles brushes it off, wordless. Scott is staring, staring.

Pretending not to notice sometimes works. This time, Scott’s eyes cut deep for the few minutes it takes him to build up the nerve.

“Are you okay?”

Stiles looks up from the textbook he’s pretending to read. Scott’s still looking at him intently, concern rising like a flood.

“Yeah, Scott. No worries.”

The Alpha doesn’t answer – just stares right where his heart sits beating in his chest, listening for the lie.

“If you knew the answer was _no_ , I don’t see why you asked.” His voice is sharp against the silence between them.

“Stiles –”

“Scott.”

Scott’s helpless expression is the knife twisting in his chest. He’s been seeing that look – in the hospital, in the sheriff’s station after Allison, in the school hallway with the Nogitsune’s voice echoing off the walls.

_I'm going to make your best friend kill you, Stiles. And you're going to let him._

“I just think… maybe you should see someone.”

A small, half-hearted glimmer of irony: “The only therapist in Beacon Hills that would understand any of this openly threatened to kill me, so…”

A beat. “Well, maybe –”

“Scott. You can’t fix everything.”

And if Scott looks like he’s grieving, Stiles says nothing about it.

“I know,” the Alpha nods. “I just… you know, you’re different.”

_You’re my brother._

Stiles swallows hard, speechless. There are just a million things he could say – and _should_ say – but none find their way out. Instead, all he can do is offer a half-hearted smile, nod, and turn his eyes back to the same page he’s been staring at all morning.

* * *

It was edging close to two in the morning by the time they finally got home, any sense of relief expertly evading them both. The house was far too quiet.

His first move was to shower. He was dirty from the high school floor, the film of sweat on his skin, and some blood from a few stray cuts, and when that was all washed away, he kept going. He scrubbed his hands raw, cleaned under each finger nail, his arms, his stomach, his face, his back – every inch of him that the Nogitsune ever touched.

He had been weaponized, and now the smell of death – bitter, rotten gauze, 409, and coyote repellent – was lingering, sticking stubbornly to his skin in spite of everything he tried.

“Stiles?” his father knocked gently, and without a word, he slowly turned the water off, stepped out, and brushed his teeth until they bled.

When he stepped back into his room, he found a pair of clean sweatpants folded on his bed, along with an old, familiar sweatshirt.

They didn’t keep most of his mother’s old clothes, but the thick green pullover that used to be her father’s had made the cut. She always wore it to bed when the nights got California-cold, and though it no longer smelled like her, he used to think could pretend if he tried hard enough.

The night around him was dark and oppressive, and he wondered what she’d think of him now.

He wandered back into his father’s room a few minutes later, taking care to knock before he entered: the muffled sound of crying was unmistakable, but the sheriff’s eyes were dry – if a bit red – by the time he came in.

“Dad?” he started, barely a whisper. “Do you… still have your handcuffs?”

The sheriff eyed him carefully. “Course I do. Why?”

“Can I see them?”

Hesitantly, he grabbed the open pair from the nightstand drawer and handed them over. Stiles turned them around in his hands for a moment, assessing the strength of the metal, the chain between the cuffs.

And slowly, near methodical, he walked over to the side of the bed his father didn’t use and closed one cuff around the nightstand leg. He closed the other around his dominant wrist.

He invited himself to stay, but not with so many words.

“Stiles –”

“I think just for tonight.”

“Stiles, the Oni checked you. It’s gone. It’s over,” the sheriff said softly, grabbing the key from the drawer and crossing back over to his son. Before Stiles could argue, the key went in and the cuffs dropped off.

The sheriff’s hands fell firmly on Stiles’ shoulders. “It’s over,” he said again. “And you’re safe.”

He let his head fall for a moment, and after a moment, lifted it back up to look his father in the eye. “It doesn’t feel like it, though.”

His father wrapped his arms around him tight, as if that alone could keep his son safe forever. He could have stood there and repeated it, over and over. He could have re-locked every door, re-armed every system they had, marched Stiles around the house to show him every camera still recording as normal, but he didn’t. He just squeezed his son as tight as he could and didn’t let go.

* * *

The high school hallway is crowded and deafening, and he is late to class by the time Lydia walks up to him, an urgent look in her eye.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, and at first, she just stares. He’s seen that haunted look before – in the woods, on the lacrosse field, in the tunnels below Oak Creek, and it has him immediately on edge. “Lydia?”

She looks moments way from crying. “Are you okay, Stiles?”

“What?” he starts. She’s asked this before, along with Scott and the rest of the pack, and he’s been mostly perfectly honest. Her tone suggests that she’s asking something different. “Yeah, Lydia, I’m okay. Why?”

She doesn’t answer in so many words, but presses a little more: “Are you going anywhere tonight?”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I’m staying home.”

She seems unconvinced.

He sighs and repeats, “Lydia, I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m staying home tonight, and nothing’s going to happen. Whatever you saw, I’ll be fine. Okay?”

Her eyes are wide and brimming with nerves, but after a moment, she finally nods.

He smiles.

“Okay. Now come on, we’re late for English.”

* * *

The thing is, he meant it when he said it.

The other thing is, he can’t quite pinpoint what changed his mind.

And the _other_ thing is – he knows this shouldn’t be the breaking point. Nothing about this early June night is remarkable, nothing sinister, nothing terrible. But he wakes up for the umpteenth time that night and catches sight of the red strings cut crudely but still hanging from the corkboard on the wall, and it strikes him suddenly that those strings only ever seem to laugh at him these days.

In the days, nights, weeks, after Allison died, his father, Scott, Lydia all suggested that he finally pull them down. But how could he do that so soon? He strung them up Before the Oni arrived, Before they ever knew about the Nogitsune, Before she was gone and never coming back.

Cutting them down would finally end everything from Before and resign him to After. None of them could ever go back, but some nights, half-asleep, he can make believe he could find a way.

Most nights, all he ever does is play make-believe and wake up screaming.

Tonight, he sits up in bed, bone-tired. The night outside is uncharacteristically quiet. Most nights in Beacon Hills are alive with sounds of life: crickets, birds, coyotes, cicadas, but he can’t quite hone in on a single particular sound. Maybe that’s just it.

He knows better than to let the flood gates open, but he feels the switch flipping, and he can lie to himself all he wants – but he knows what did it, even if he won’t speak it out loud.

It was the echo of Lydia, screaming for Allison, and the sight of Isaac so shell-shocked and broken. It was his hand drumming gently on the hilt of the sword sticking Scott through, the muscle memory of twisting the blade while he, himself, all but screamed and powerlessly begged for it all to stop. It was a drill bit racing steadily toward Malia’s forehead. It was Aiden’s desperation as he lay dying and Ethan’s howl of bitter loss. It was every person he killed quickly that never had a single last word. It was his father, threatened with being dragged through another round of watching his family slip away, inevitable and excruciatingly slow. It was staring at _himself,_ being cornered in the high school hallway.

The memories and the blame they all tell him isn’t his, they’ll haunt him for the rest of his life.

Part of him knows it’s a mistake. The other part of him resigns to the fact that life is full of mistakes, and sometimes it ends with them, too. Tonight he is so, so tired.

The chaos swirls viciously, viciously around him until he finally steals one of Allison’s daggers from a box of supernatural evidence still sitting in the living room, out of place. He leaves the house without a single word.

No words? Always a man (a boy, a kid) of many, sprawling words and quick-witted remarks, he considers it all so very ironic.

It’s an hour or two before he settles on a place, a familiar patch of woods overlooking the city. His walk is slow by then, practically a stroll – hoping secretly that the feeling will pass, but it hadn’t, didn’t, feels like it won’t. A shame.

His phone is tucked into his dresser drawer, back at home, so he wouldn’t see any messages, missed calls, frantic texts coming through, even if he wanted to.

There is a long, unceremonious pause before he takes a deep, shuddering breath of Beacon Hills and swallows his bottle of sleeping pills first. They were specifically designed and prescribed so they probably can’t do what he wants them to, but he hopes – with his vision swimming and pulsing – that at the very least they might make the next part easier.

Allison’s blade is firm in his flimsy hand, but someone pulls his arm back.

_“Stiles!”_

Argent’s voice echoes sharply through the trees, and his first and most prominent thought is how _dare_ he? Allison wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him, and maybe dying won’t bring her back, but at least it might even the score. It might even the body count in Beacon Hills, might even his soul if he’s lucky, but that’s a far off hope. In that moment, Argent’s hand on his bicep is ripping him away from his last chance at redemption.

Of _course_ the hunter would be the first to find him.

At first, he has no idea why he keeps trying, fighting Argent’s grip with all the clumsy strength he has ever had. It is far easier than turning to face him, hearing him insist that Allison would never have wanted this. So what?

Allison never saw half of what he had done. If she had, maybe she would feel differently.

He slips in the struggle and earns himself a slice down his leg, nowhere particularly harmful, but deep enough to startle him. By the time he hears himself cry out, there is a second set of hands – he suspects Scott, sprinting onto the scene – on his other arm, hastily dragging him away from the dagger on the ground, ensuring it’s safely out of reach.

And even if there wasn’t – the hazy pill-pull of sleep would do the trick just fine.

* * *

He stopped believing in God when he was ten years old. Nine, actually – the doubt settled in as his mother’s death inched closer and closer, but the day she died was the final nail in the coffin. His mother died slowly as he sobbed into her shoulder, tried to get as close to her as he possibly could, and as she slipped away, God was nowhere to be found.

So when he dreamed of Allison, standing in the stark white center of his mind, he was under no grand illusions.

But with all he had seen, part of him still found itself hoping.

She looked at him with kind eyes and smiled sweetly, and wasn’t that just so _cruel?_ He didn’t deserve her kindness, her forgiveness, or this moment.

Tears spilled silently down his face as he stared.

“You’re so sad, Stiles,” she said softly, a swell of emotion clear on her face. “You don’t have to be. I’m not.”

_Death doesn't happen to you, Lydia. It happens to everyone around you, to all the people left standing at your funeral trying to figure out how they're going to live the rest of their lives now without you in it._

He was speechless.

She rushed forward and hugged him tight, her arms firm around his neck. She hugged him and it killed him: she felt so warm, alive, and real.

He had no idea what he believed anymore, but letting his forehead fall onto her shoulder, squeezing her back, it all felt natural. It felt like forgiveness he didn’t deserve.

She leaned back to look him in the eye and told him, “None of that was your fault.”

The urge to argue with her rose up, but fell away as she told him, “And none of this is bad.”

His voice shook and his breath shuddered as he fought back a sob.

“I miss you.”

Allison offered him a calm smile. “I miss you too, Stiles.”

As his name fell off her lips, he finally started to cry. “I’m sorry, Allison.”

“Don’t be.”

“Well, I am,” he said, unsteady, but with a single ounce of conviction shining through. “I am, and you’re just going to have to live with it.”

He spoke without thinking, froze in the moments that followed, but the way she laughed at the irony – cheerful and full of life – made the smallest part of him start to believe her when she grinned and assured him: “You’re going to be fine.”

He smiled as she hugged him again, and the moment seemed to last forever.

* * *

His father is the only one in the room by the time he opened his eyes, his head throbbing and lazily spinning in the dark. The part of him that shame is not so thoroughly crushing is tempted to just let him sleep lightly beside him, but after a few minutes of the muted hospital sounds echoing around him as he takes stock of the IV in his arm and the stitches in his leg – the part that’s still crumbling begins to win out.

He’s really beginning to hate this hospital.

“Dad?” he whispers, his voice raw and rough on the edges.

Always easy to sir, the sheriff blinks himself awake and his gaze falls quickly on Stiles. His son’s eyes glisten off the dim hallway light.

“Stiles,” he breaths, and though the hug he pulls him into is rougher and more of a desperate jostle than initially planned, he can feel his son lean into it.

“I’m sorry,” is all Stiles can think to say, a quiet, shameful plea. “Dad, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

He shakes dizzily in his father’s arms and cries in spite of himself. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

The sheriff’s voice is gentle and quiet as he shushes him, tells him not to be sorry, but the joke is on him, isn’t it? He’ll be sorry until the day he dies – sorry for nearly leaving him, sorry for forgetting that he was all the family he had left.

He can feel his father’s uneven breath, feel a few stray tears dripping down onto his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says one last time, little more than a whisper.

His dad pulls back, holding Stiles by his shoulders, and studies his face carefully. “Just don’t do that again.”

His voice breaks as he pleads – and all his son can do is nod. “I won’t.”

“You’re going to be okay, alright?” the sheriff promises. “We’re all going to be okay.”

* * *

“Can we do your place, actually?” he says, phone pressed up against his ear.

“If you want to, sure,” Scott answers. “Any reason why?”

Stiles takes a moment to look around his room. The bed is made with freshly cleaned sheets, the floor is clear for the first time in months, and every paper left on his desk was filed away neatly. The walls above his bed have every sticker they used to, plus a few more for added measure.

Every photo and cut red string was taken down from the cork board, but placed gently in the back of his bottom desk drawer.

He doesn’t need any of them anymore, but some things just take time.

California in July is usually hot, but today is not terrible. The windows are open and fresh air is blowing through the room, but something about these four walls feels stale and stagnant.

“Just getting a little tired of this room,” he admits, a hint of a chuckle hiding somewhere beneath it.

“Fair enough. You got the DVD?”

“‘You got the DVD?’ Of _course_ I do, Scotty, and nothing on Earth is going to get you out of Star Wars this time, got it? No alpha werewolves, no kanimas, no –” _No Nogitsunes._ “None of any of that.”

Scott laughs on the other end of the line. “Whatever you say.”

An hour later, all Stiles can do is lay flat on the McCalls’ living room floor, pulling at his hair as the movie sticks on the title screen and doesn’t budge. The DVD player below the TV is years old and hasn’t been touched in God knows how long, and it would all be so hilarious if not so terribly tragic.

“I picked the wrong house,” Stiles says, his dramatic sigh filling the room. “Damn it, I picked the wrong house.”

“Want to go back to your place?” Scott offers, grinning from his spot on the couch, and Stiles just sits up from the floor and looks at him.

How long has it been since they sat like this, at one of their houses, together with no threats or dangers or life-changing turns of events?

He nearly missed this moment.

“No,” Stiles sighs again, a hint of shame prickling on the edge of his smile. He quashes it as well as he can. “No, we can find something else. But _one day,_ Scott, one day soon…”

* * *

Lydia still walks on eggshells around him, and in a moment of calm before the storm, he finds her in the kitchen of the lake house.

“Hey,” he starts, his voice soft. He could only ever speak softly and gently to Lydia Martin.

She studies him carefully. “Hey.”

A pause stretches out for miles between them. On the other side of the wall, Scott and Malia talk about tonight – about the full moon, about Liam, about the dead pool. In here, they could hear each other’s nerves.

“I just… I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he continues. He has always been light-hearted and quick to make her smile, but more and more, he looks at her, at Scott and Kira and Malia, with a rare, sober expression.

She hates it. “You don’t have to –”

“I do,” he insists. “You saw something, and you tried to warn me, and I dismissed you. That wasn’t right, and I won’t do that again.”

There’s a single beat, and he looks her dead in the eyes. “I’ll never do any of that again.”

She sighs a heavy sigh, and her eyes shine in the early evening light.

“That was the second time I couldn’t save you.”

“That’s not your responsibility.”

“Isn’t it, though?” she tilts her head, a challenge. “No one else here can do what I do. If I can’t even save –” _Allison, Aiden, you._ “— if I can’t even save my friends, then what’s the point?”

He wraps her in a hug before the two of them even register.

“The point is to try,” he says. “All we can do, right?”

After a few long moments, they pull apart to the sound of Kira’s tires on the gravel outside.

“Now, tonight,” Stiles continues, “I’m going to try to keep my girlfriend from killing me. And we’re going to try to keep Liam from killing anyone. And then tomorrow night, if we’re lucky, we’re going to try to stop more supernaturals from getting killed.”

He offers her a smile and a bit of his old optimism. “How does that sound?”

* * *

“For a little while,” he says, “I was possessed by an evil spirit.”

All eyes are on him.

“It was very evil.”

The look on Liam’s face is hard to place – caught somewhere between disbelief and reluctant pity: “What are you now?”

It takes a moment to consider the question, and all of the ways he might not be able to truly answer it.

He isn’t one of them. He’s no werewolf, no werecoyote, no banshee, no kitsune. But some nights, he doesn’t feel completely human, either.

The weight of the last few months will never truly disappear, but in that moment, it gets a little lighter.

“Better.”

* * *

“You sure you’re up for this?”

This Jeep has seen its fair share of heartfelt conversations in the middle of the night, and truth be told, it is better at keeping secrets than it is at running. Parked outside the McCalls’ house, the clock blinks past midnight.

Stiles stares, but Scott is undeterred.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I won’t blame you if you want to sit this one out,” the Alpha continues. “Figured you might… be bored of almost dying.”

There’s fear underpinning his words, but few people other than Stiles Stilinski would be able to spot it. There’s an unspoken fact sitting between them, too: “You’re only human.”

The car keeps running in spite of a small misfire, and for a few long seconds, the engine is the only sound.

“Thirty-three,” he says finally.

“What?”

“Thirty-three people,” Stiles continues, eyes cast down at the steering wheel. “Including Allison and Aiden. Thirty-three people died because of the Nogitsune. Thirty-three people died because of me.”

“Stiles, you _know_ –”

“It doesn’t matter.” He is no longer angry when he says it, and – for tonight – no longer crushed under the weight of that fact. “My fault or not, thirty-three people are dead. That means I have to save thirty-three people before I’m square. Maybe even twice that.”

“Stiles.”

He meets Scott’s eyes again, but for the first time in a long while, a flash of determination shines out.

“In this town? I’ll get there. And even if I don’t…”

He smiles.

“Can’t get rid of me that easy. I’m with you, Scott. No matter what."


End file.
